The same way that Junk is still Junk despite playing Courser of Kruphix, Siege Rhino, Drown in Sorrow, Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm, etc. Before RtR it still had the same core of the deck, it just added some new cards. The deck's strategy and colors remains the same, but the tools to get there are a bit different.
It's the same as UR Delver. Delver was still a thing before Khans, but it just ran more counterspells/burn in the place of Monastery Swifstpear and Treasure Cruise/DtT.
Decks evolve. Always have.
The problem is that when junk uses any of those cards it didn't warp the format towards "hey everybody lets play the same deck" and besides abrupt decay those other cards really didn't add anything super good for junk. Before TC and Swiftspear UR delver wasn't really that good. It could certainly win games but wasn't super competitive. Now it is the most popular aggro deck and the most popular deck in the format that's not evolution that's friggen mutation.
I like the list. I have also moved from 'flash' to pure control (in fact I only run two Restos now).
I would like to know more about the games against Tron. Do you just go for the burn plane while keeping up Leak/Condescend when possible?
Have you tested against Scapeshift?
Tron is a tough match up to be honest I usually just get lucky the tron players in my meta are more U tron or UW tron I don't see as much Gr tron so that's why I don't run sowing salt and because I can generally disrupt them enough to the point where I can just burn them out and disregard their threats unless a karn is involved. Scapeshift is a good matchup for me with my list because I have instant speed threats like resto angel and I run a lot of counterspells. Between dispel post-board and logic knot I can usually win every counter war for 3-5 mana.
Coming over from 4c gifts here--I've been watching this gifts deck put up results for a while now, while 4c sort of languishes after a hot spell a few months ago. It looks like Mcwinsauce puts up 4-0's on the dailies, and I think UW put up a result or two at some recent starcity IQ recently.
But with strand and delta, as well as the previous marsh flats, why not dump the tron lands for fetches and go full esper? In 4c I hardcast elesh norn more times than I think I should, but I can't imagine UW tron is casting it any faster than I am via gifts against affinity (where it really matters), or pod. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the trade off is getting to cast emrakul/mindslaver as additional top-end finishers?
I'm currently putting UW slowly, but I sort of hit a roadblock until I can answer whether or not tron is really helping out my game-plan compared to the new options.
With tron you can turn three or four elesh norn or iona which is very significant and threatening emrakul an entire game always makes players play around you. I thought about esper colors for thoughtseize but I don't think it's where the deck wants to be. The deck would come less consistent and wouldn't have the same explosiveness that it does now.
What do people think about treasure cruise and dig through timeI feel like cutting snapcaster and adding DTT could be very good for the deck I also think that DTT is stronger than revelation in this type of a deck I wouldn't mind moving rev to the sb for burn matchups and aggresive matchups and having 2 DTT main thoughts?
Because there is no really good reason to play black over red. Lightning bolt is arguably the most powerful card in the format and combined with snap casters they are even better. Black doesn't offer much besides an extra wrath, thoughtseize, IoK and bob.
Except that your statement is completely an opinion and not proved in anyway. There are a ton of tier 1 decks that dont run bolt and a ton of cards that are played in those decks laugh at bolt. Bolt is a good card, and easily one of the most versatile cards ever printed for its cost/effect but there are lots of reasons to run black over red and making blanket statements that arent true doesnt add anything useful/helpful to the conversation.
Are all great cards that work well in control shells.
I clearly stated that Black doesn't add anything better than what red offers and gave examples most of which you mentioned I said the only things black offer are "an extra wrath, thoughtseize, IoK and bob." bolt is just better suited for the deck than these spells and currently keranos and ajani are great finishers. I never said a deck has to run bolt to be tier 1 you're just over-reacting I play storm and tron as well as Junk so I know that tier 1 decks don't require bolt. I'm just saying that splashing for black isn't as good as splashing for red because of how good lightning bolt is in the meta and also the fetchland issue which has been mentioned. I hope that's helpful enough for you. PS smother is way to narrow damnation is a black wrath of god which wee already have access to black sun's zenith is bad at sorcery speed disfigure is not bolt, consume the meek is interesting but not worth splashing for esper charm is good, lingering souls is alright and thoughtseize and IoK are great but don't give the reach that bolt does hope that was useful.
Sorry to ask such a blunt question - any tips for playing against storm? I'm running kikiless with 2x revelation, 4x cryptic and the usual suspects.
Played my first games against it today. It didn't go terribly but it's hard to know what to counter, mainly.
Thanks.
Just don't let them get started counter pyromancer ascension and past in flames it is really dependant on the situatiojn if you understand the fundamentals of the storm deck you should be able to pinpoint where to counter what to limit their spell count. SB cards that are good in the match up - engineered explosives deals with empty the warrens nuff said, relic of progenitus shuts down ascension and PiF their two biggest ways to go off on you, counterflux counters all the copies of a storm card which is very relevant. wear//tear is also good because it kills BLOOD MOON - the moon is death to our deck DEATH generally, celestial purge is also a decent answer to blood moon and pyromancer ascension. Bad cards in the matchup are probably remand maybe lightning helix, shadow of doubt, electrolyze - still decent against warrens but no more than 3 in this matchup I think. I might be forgetting something else that is bad in this matchup though
If they want us to be innovative with the modern format than this is what they should do - print more new cards that can actually be played in a deck or can foster their own deck to fill gaps that are not in modern ie. legacy style reanimator etc.. We have a fixed pool of cards and the power level lately in standard is pretty weak with the format being pretty slow and there being alot of 5+ drops. The format is pretty young and we need more tournaments to figure out what works and what doesn't Standard gets weekly FNMs so people can try out new wacky ideas but if there is one modern event that you can get to all year you are not going to risk it all and try out some new fancy deck that you are not sure is going to work because the risk is just too large so I don't see why they thought barely increasing gps and closing us out of the PT and the way the new PTQs and PPTQs work is going to help us innovate in any way. They done messed up and should just restart from square one and admit they messed up big.
In response to the comment about needing to be more proactive I think that's where cards like vendilion clique may start to see more play you can flash it, it gets rid of a threat albeit if they have double snap double remand or something it sucks but then it's still a 3/1 with flying combined with celestial colonnade hits for 7. Also personally I have been thinking about just trying 2 or 3 resto angels on turn 4 or 5 I can't think of too many better options than dropping a restoration angel on your opponents end step. It doesn't remove our ability to control the game and increases our tempo and requires them to use their resources to hamper our game instead of having all their resources allocated to furthering their game. Resto angels also highly increase the likelyhood of 2 for 1ing your opponents I don't mind EoT cast andgel it get's leaked say you have to mana up remand the angel you draw a card untap draw another card and pass the turn back - value(plus it don't die to bolt!). Anyways to summ it up thoughts on resto angel as a one or 2 of or maybe vendilion clique as a 1 or 2 and if we do add either or what do we cut?
In competitive modern I don't think there is a place for any temples unless they are being cheated into play with a primeval titan but you don't want to draw them because they are so slow compared to other options.
I'm torn- it's nice they're doing something,
but it feels a little "too little, too late".
Hopefully it will actually have a positive impact.
This was my first feeling when I saw this too. Part of me feels relief, the other part annoyed that Wizards didn't saw a card like TNN. It was pretty obvious they didn't test this product extensively, nor even discuss about certain individual cards. Most of these are reprints anyways, so the energy could be focussed on the new cards. I'm not quite sure how hard that is.
Alas, I'm hoping this move will bring TNN down to $10ish...
@jturphy: You're probably replying in jest, but there's also truth in what you just said too.
Of course they didn't test how this product would impact Legacy extensively. They have always admitted as such. There are thousands of cards in Legacy and the metagame is unbelievably diverse. It is near impossible to test for that format in the months they have for testing a product. They have always said when they print cards for Legacy they go more off of theory, and hope that the card doesn't cause problems in the format, but they will be wrong sometimes. TNN is a big reason why I don't think we'll see them print a lot of cards that are actively good in Legacy anymore, instead only trying to react to how that metagame is shaping, which is kind of what they said during the Born of the Gods R&D stream.
And yes, what I said was sarcastic, because despite what the idiots on this site say, Wizards rarely makes mistakes in how it prints products. The imbalance of the commander decks and Commander's Arsenal are the only issues from the last two years. The rest of the complaining is just idiots being idiots.
Modern Masters scarcity was another one.
MM did exactly what it was supposed to do. It lowered the barrier to entry to Modern and increased the supply of a number of cards. It was only a failure for people who ignore facts.
Lowered the barrier of entry to Modern? Yeah....... no.
I suppose it would be fair to say it dropped the barrier from the 120th floor to the 100th. Doesn't make the people on the 2nd floor feel much better though.
The Mythics released in MM are in almost every case MORE expensive than they were before.
Goyf price before MM: $120
Goyf current price: $190
V Clique price before MM: $50
V Clique current price: $60
Dark Confidant dropped from $90 to $75
Elspeth dropped from $26 to $21
Meanwhile, the most expensive cards in Modern NOT named Goyf weren't in MM (and they shouldn't have been), so the bar is still in the lower stratosphere.
Don't pretend that MM was supposed to "help new players". Cause that's BS.
This is completely correct wizards did not expect the demand to increase for modern cards as much as it did when modern masters was released. People assume because supply increased than price should go down right? Wrong if the demand curve for modern cards shifts far more to the right than does than prices actually go up and that is what happened. People like to talk smack and they have no idea what is actually going on. reprinting cards does not make them less valuable or cheaper unless demand stays the same and supply increases by a significant amount.
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The problem is that when junk uses any of those cards it didn't warp the format towards "hey everybody lets play the same deck" and besides abrupt decay those other cards really didn't add anything super good for junk. Before TC and Swiftspear UR delver wasn't really that good. It could certainly win games but wasn't super competitive. Now it is the most popular aggro deck and the most popular deck in the format that's not evolution that's friggen mutation.
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Tron is a tough match up to be honest I usually just get lucky the tron players in my meta are more U tron or UW tron I don't see as much Gr tron so that's why I don't run sowing salt and because I can generally disrupt them enough to the point where I can just burn them out and disregard their threats unless a karn is involved. Scapeshift is a good matchup for me with my list because I have instant speed threats like resto angel and I run a lot of counterspells. Between dispel post-board and logic knot I can usually win every counter war for 3-5 mana.
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With tron you can turn three or four elesh norn or iona which is very significant and threatening emrakul an entire game always makes players play around you. I thought about esper colors for thoughtseize but I don't think it's where the deck wants to be. The deck would come less consistent and wouldn't have the same explosiveness that it does now.
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I clearly stated that Black doesn't add anything better than what red offers and gave examples most of which you mentioned I said the only things black offer are "an extra wrath, thoughtseize, IoK and bob." bolt is just better suited for the deck than these spells and currently keranos and ajani are great finishers. I never said a deck has to run bolt to be tier 1 you're just over-reacting I play storm and tron as well as Junk so I know that tier 1 decks don't require bolt. I'm just saying that splashing for black isn't as good as splashing for red because of how good lightning bolt is in the meta and also the fetchland issue which has been mentioned. I hope that's helpful enough for you. PS smother is way to narrow damnation is a black wrath of god which wee already have access to black sun's zenith is bad at sorcery speed disfigure is not bolt, consume the meek is interesting but not worth splashing for esper charm is good, lingering souls is alright and thoughtseize and IoK are great but don't give the reach that bolt does hope that was useful.
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Just don't let them get started counter pyromancer ascension and past in flames it is really dependant on the situatiojn if you understand the fundamentals of the storm deck you should be able to pinpoint where to counter what to limit their spell count. SB cards that are good in the match up - engineered explosives deals with empty the warrens nuff said, relic of progenitus shuts down ascension and PiF their two biggest ways to go off on you, counterflux counters all the copies of a storm card which is very relevant. wear//tear is also good because it kills BLOOD MOON - the moon is death to our deck DEATH generally, celestial purge is also a decent answer to blood moon and pyromancer ascension. Bad cards in the matchup are probably remand maybe lightning helix, shadow of doubt, electrolyze - still decent against warrens but no more than 3 in this matchup I think. I might be forgetting something else that is bad in this matchup though
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This is completely correct wizards did not expect the demand to increase for modern cards as much as it did when modern masters was released. People assume because supply increased than price should go down right? Wrong if the demand curve for modern cards shifts far more to the right than does than prices actually go up and that is what happened. People like to talk smack and they have no idea what is actually going on. reprinting cards does not make them less valuable or cheaper unless demand stays the same and supply increases by a significant amount.